Bill and I are home from the holidays, as opposed to being home for the holidays. And while we weren't able to travel all the way to our real homes, I think we found a couple new "homes" during our foreign holiday celebrations.
For our Christmas kickoff, see Bill's post on Mettenschicht. I won't post the address of his blog, as it's written primarily for his friends and might offend the more refined sensibilities of my readership. But if you'd like, send me an email or an fbook whatever and I'll let you know how to find it. I'd like to keep my readers to myself and not share with Bill, because I like you all so much and because he and I are vaguely competitive about our blogging. In spite of this, I appreciate his description of Mettenschicht so I'll include it here:
"Well, unfortunately, it was not really feasible for me to make the trip back to America for Christmas, but luckily this allowed me to celebrate a new and wonderful holiday. Mettenschicht is a tradition particular to this region of Germany- Die Erzgebirge, or Ore Mountains. When this was still a mining area, the last shift in the mines before Christmas was celebrated with a big party, something like an office Christmas party, only more hardcore. As you can imagine, those miners knew how to get down. So today the last Friday before Christmas is Mettenschicht and everyone rages...traditionally. Katy and I were invited to a party at someone's house, and were picked up with our friend Nico, who I know from the tennis team.
Upon arriving, I was impressed by the wide variety of people in attendance. There were middle aged alcoholics who looked, as Katy put it, like cartoon depictions of alcoholics. There were hardcore punx with leather jackets and crazy hair, and there were some normal people. There was some accordion playing and singing-along going on, but the younger party-goers seemed just as ready to mock this outdated tomfoolery as we were. In the garage, people stood around chain smoking and crushing beers, so we set up shop there. As usual, we were a huge source of interest for these small-town folk, and we were questioned vigorously about all sorts of topics from Rage Against the Machine to feminine hair waxing issues. The young people we hang out with at these events are very friendly and enormously entertaining. One young man boasted that his English was very good, which it was. Marcel, another fellow tennis player, conceded but added that "his penis is very small.""
Needless to say, we had a good time. And we made friends. And I made friends, or began to make friends, with a couple of girls (I miss talking to girls). One of them works in a hair salon and has offered to cut my hair, which is good because the bangs have been growing unchecked for two months, and they're a little out of control. The other told me how to find her on fbook, which I suppose I should do, if I'm going to pursue this friendship thing. And our friends Nico and Marcel want to take us snowboarding (ie, loan us boards and gear, drive us there, then teach us how to snowboard), and a couple of others want to take us to a soccer match in nearby Aue. So good news for a social life in Zwonitz.
Mettenschicht was Friday, we spent Saturday hungover, on Sunday opened Christmas presents from mi familia (which were awesome, and sorry we couldn't wait for the 25th--we travelled lightly), and on Monday did major cleaning in anticipation of a Lehm inspection during our absence (and scored major points when Herr Lehm poked his head in the door to tell us something and saw me mopping the kitchen floor; double points because I was wearing the new little nightgown Mum sent for Xmas [eww, I know, but it has comedic value]). Tuesday morning at 930 H. Lehm drove us to the Zwonitz station, then we took an hour-long ride to Chemnitz, and from there an hour-long ride to Dresden, and there waited for the lady who was driving us to the airport in Berlin (A mitfahrgelegenheit--literally, "withrideopportunity") in her white Twingo. What is a Twingo? We didn't know either, so after approaching a few white cars in the station parking lot, Bill asked a guy and was told, "Very small and round". And so it was. I slept through the two hour drive and we arrived two hours before check-in opened. So we got lunch at an "American" diner in the airport, scraped cabbage and carrots off of our "American" burgers, drank cola without ice and ate french fries, which naturally had been dusted in curry powder.
But we got on the plane and to England without further incident, where my cousin Maria and her partner Alan (who became her fiancee on Christmas Eve!) picked us up, took us to dinner at a pub, and drove us out to Aunty Eva's house in Fairlight, a little village east of Hastings on the English Channel. Aunty Eva is my nana's younger sister (Nana Rose/Kay escaped to New Zealand when she was in her twenties) and Maria is her daughter, my cousin of some sort. Eva's house, Tudor-looking and built in the 30s, sits on the cliff-edge above the Channel. She's lost about 10 feet of back-garden in her 25 years living there--her sister, my Aunty Peg (the oldest of the three sisters) usually can't be coerced to visit there, as she's convinced the house is going to topple into the sea while she's asleep. In fact, she told me that when she went this summer she slept with a change of clothes in her purse, and her purse in bed with her, in case she had to make a swift escape in the middle of the night. It's really an incredible place. We slept in the upstairs bedroom, where French doors open onto an unfinished roof deck facing the sea. It was quite cold the whole time, but sunny, and one morning we opened the doors and sat out on the roof with our coffee, watching the waves and absorbing some Vitamin D.
Christmas was at Maria's, in Hastings. Alan cooked a huge roast turkey dinner (which was nice, since Bill and I didn't get turkey at Thanksgiving), then Lauren, his 9 year old daughter, opened an enormous pile of presents while we all watched. Then we went back to the table for dessert. Then we took a break, played some Monopoly Jr (Lauren kicked ass, and didn't let anyone forget it), then went back to the table for cheese, crackers, and chocolate. Boxing Day (day after Christmas in England and New Zealand--and, I suppose, in Australia, though who really cares) was more of the same at Maria's. Another huge meal, then dessert, then more snacking.
Saturday we drove to Brighton to visit the other half of my England family, Aunty Peg's half. Peggy has three daughters, Lynda, Margaret, and Tricia. Lynda has Rosie, a year younger than me, Margaret has JoAnna and Katie (and Jo has Jeanie, 3 years old), and Tricia has Evie, who is a 4 year old wild thing. It's a family dominated by the feminine, needless to say. More food and reminiscing there, and Bill feeling right at home, he said, at a family holiday marked by boredom and a few old people.
Bill and I stayed in Brighton with Lynda Saturday and Sunday night. She's very artistic and lives in a very bohemian home chock full of interesting bits and pieces and with a bath but no shower. We went second-hand-shopping in Brighton on Sunday, and that night my cousin Rosie came home from London, where she studies at Kings College, with her boyfriend Will. And Rosie and Will and Bill and I had a grand time that night drinking wine at home and then at the bar and then coming home to make mulled wine and eat cheese and chocolate while sitting on the floor of the living room. It all felt delightfully bohemian. But Bill and I had meant to have Monday in London, leaving early in the morning. This, of course, did not happen, owing to my mulled hangover. Instead, we went into Brighton again, got Bill a Cornish pasty and me some pasta salad from Marks and Spencer, met Rosie and Will for another drink, and took the train back to Hastings to have another huge dinner at Maria's. Then our last night with Aunty Eva, and a lazy Tuesday with a walk along the cliff, and Maria and Alan took us to the airport that evening.
And details of Berlin tomorrow, or perhaps later, because the as the length of this post increases my patience with it correspondingly decreases.
Biss shpeta.
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1 comment:
and canada. boxing day is in canada too. don't forget to put your box out...that sounds strange.
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